Queer counterpoints: Making ‘mistakes’ in loveLife’s ‘Make Your Move’

Abstract

Drawing upon queer theory and Said’s notion of the counterpoint, the article analyses the launch episode of a reality television series produced by the South African NGO loveLife, which focused on a young, self-identified lesbian woman in Soweto. We offer a counter example to discourses of the powerless victimhood of Black, gender and sexually non-normative individuals in South African townships. We unveil contrapuntally the pushes and pulls between the voice of the authoritative facilitator, aligned with loveLife’s HIV-prevention and youth leadership development methodology, and that of the young woman herself, who volunteered for the intervention, focusing on their disagreement on how best to ‘accommodate’ the prevailing social norms of contemporary South Africa. We also discuss the counterpoint between us – a discourse analyst observing the effects of particular articulations on South African society related to loveLife’s social aims, and the producer of the episode, charged with the protection of the NGO’s brand identity. We conclude that norms governing gender and sexuality in a rapidly evolving society such as South Africa’s are best understood as presenting analysis with dilemmas and contradictions, and that contrapuntal reading is a valuable tool for bringing these tensions under scrutiny without succumbing to the urge to resolve them.

Language, gender and sexuality in 2021

“…Her analysis draws attention to the disruptive value of rebellion and the liberatory potential of intersectional feminism. Milani and Burnett (2021) also illuminate the meanders of resistance and the canny subversion of norms in their analysis of a South African reality show. They seek to counter simplistic discourses of powerless victimhood related to gender nonnormative individuals in South Africa by examining how queer performances have to come to terms with the normative pressures that constrain, but do not ban, agentive possibilities.…”

Unpacking pervasive heteronormativity in sub-Saharan Africa: Opportunities to embrace multiplicity of sexualities

“…Seely (2020Seely ( : 1234 asserts that "it is within the global South that some of the most promising possibilities for revitalizing queer theory can be located, by providing an occasion to rethink entrenched assumptions about the relationships between sexuality…and the ideals of freedom". Although queer theory has been most relevant for practice in countries in the global North, it can still be used to unmask how heterosexuality imposes itself as a norm in the global South, offering a useful conceptual apparatus for understanding the historical production of normalityversus-deviance in the colonial project in Africa (Milani and Burnett, 2021). Pindi (2020) has put African feminism in dialogue with queer theory and argues that they share an intersectional approach to deconstructing interlocking oppressions of sexuality that perpetuate the erasure and intolerance of non-heteronormative identities.…”